According to FiveThirtyEight, PA is on the verge of using risk assessment in sentencing. Sentencing based on how likely one is to commit future crimes might be a phenomenal way to preliminary reduce a lot of the harm that the drug war has done to our justice system without taking the politically unpopular step of actually making drugs legal. It could also be a very clumsy system that decreases the effectiveness of the justice system. We’ll have to wait and see, but state experimentation with government is never a bad thing.

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom. If we knew how freedom would be used, the case for it would largely disappear.… Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad.… It is because we do not know how individuals will use their freedom that it is so important.

This shows why markets are amazing. In order to be the best, you have to innovate so fast that patents are worthless. Tesla isn’t going to win the electric car war by hiding behind patents. Tesla’s going to win the electric car war by innovating so fast that by the time their patents are filed and accepted they’ll be light years ahead of them.